ipUnplugged and NetMotion grant wireless users room to roam

When you weigh just the benefits of mobility, flexibility, and productivity, going wireless is a no-brainer. But factor in roaming issues, spotty coverage on the corporate campus, and security vulnerabilities, and the decision can get complicated.

I looked at roaming solutions from ipUnplugged and NetMotion designed to solve these problems. Although the products take slightly different tacks, they share the same goal: to provide secure, continuous connectivity to corporate applications over inherently insecure and disparate wireless networks.

Both solutions appear equally matched when it comes to meeting subnet roaming expectations, enabling wireless sessions to move across router boundaries without breaking the connection. Both have components that can be deployed on pretty much any Intel-based hardware; both require a software client.

However, they also share a couple of major flaws. They support only a Windows-based mobile infrastructure and are limited to networks that can transport IP.

Overall, NetMotion Mobility 5.01, a software-only solution, has a larger array of authentication infrastructure support to manage users and groups. However, it's also much more expensive than a similar deployment with ipUnplugged's combined Roaming Gateway, Server, and Client offering.

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